How it brings clarity, organization, peace, and calmness to your file.

The second brain is an idea popularized by Tiago Forte. The concept is simple.

You need to take notes on your current affairs, future plans, insights on the content you consume and the ideas that inspire you. All of this to help ease the pressure on your first brain and to help your future self.

Life is too messy and tangled up to be relying on one brain for everything. Our brains are built for processing information, generating ideas, and linking things together. They aren’t built strongly for storing information. They are also prone to corrupting your stored information. What do I mean by that?

Let’s say you save memory. Now ideally, you’d like it to stay there untouched but that’s not what happens. Over time the memories you have slowly shift. They go from an accurate description of what happened to first losing the details and sense of when it happened, then they adjust with time. A memory from 10 years ago isn’t just what happened. It has now become tangled with dim details of what happened heavily shadowed by how you feel now.

Hence, the second brain is essential for storing and organizing things untouched. For me, it has been a source of mental calmness.

Here are the reasons why it can help you clear the clutter and calm your brain.

1. Permission Granted

You are granting permission to the machine in your head when you put something in your second brain, be it a memory, what happened during your day, meeting notes, or insights related to anything.

Permission to forget. Permission to stop worrying about where it fits. Permission to stop trying to fear it getting lost. Permission to let it go.

You are freeing up space in your brain that can be used for analytical thinking, processing, and coming up with ideas to solve problems. This doesn’t feel much at first. Then your start to see things happening.

All of a sudden you remember things that happened long ago. You come up with solutions you didn’t expect and link things that you didn’t see first.

2. Synced Emotions

If you start journaling regularly, the second brain can also be a gateway to your internal emotions. The emotions that are left unchecked. The issues that we never addressed. The questions never asked and feelings never expressed. This can be your safe little heaven where you can say or feel whatever you want.

This can also be a place where come back to see your take on an incident has evolved. How your plans for the future have shifted and how your mindset has expanded or stayed the same.

It helps me tune things and gives clarity about where I stand. I know I know. The idea of addressing your emotional problems by journaling seems ridiculous at first. I thought that too until I tried.

3. Mess No More

I like things organized. I like knowing where is what and get access to it instantly. The idea of having to think hard before storing or accessing information is where my procrastination begins in the first place. I wanted to remove that and building a second brain was the perfect solution for that.

What tool you use for building a second brain is irrelevant. It depends on your needs and likings. But whatever it is, once you have it open in the background and you know that all the information about your days, creative notes, ideas, and everything else is only one click away, you are far more likely to take action and produce something meaningful. You’ll also be much faster when you can go directly to the contents instead of running the maze of filesystem first.

Conclusion

Overall, building a second brain is an idea worth consideration. It can help you in more ways than can be covered in a Medium post. It can boost your mental health, clarity, and productivity. There are tons of resources out there to get started and some awesome reliable tools to store your materials.

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